Giancarlo Esposito Trying to Manifest a Second Season of ‘Parish’ Into Existence

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Parish.]

The Big Picture

• In the AMC series ‘Parish,’ Gracián “Gray” Parish risks everything for revenge after his son’s murder, using his skills in the criminal underground.
• Memory flashbacks in the series tackle grief and loss, revealing the haunting past of Gracián Parish.
• The potential for a second season is hinted at, with unresolved storylines and rich character dynamics.

The AMC New Orleans-set crime thriller Parish has wrapped up its six-episode season, with Gracián “Gray” Parish (Giancarlo Esposito) risking everything for revenge on behalf of his son who was murdered. Gray’s skills as a wheelman were very useful in the criminal underground, but they also were a direct threat to his family’s safety when they’d already been through enough personal tragedy and trauma. And while some of the nefarious players might have met their fate, there is still the question of what’s next for Gracián Parish.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Esposito, who’s been part of the project’s development for a few years as an executive producer, talked about what changed over time and from the original British series, devising the memory flashbacks, the effects of dealing with grief and loss, that moment with The Horse’s son and how it ultimately played out, that he would love to do a second season, and how delicious this time in his career is.

‘Parish’ Evolved and Changed Many Times Over the Years of Development

Collider: Because this is a series you’ve been with for several years during the development, the drafts and the waiting, what has stayed exactly the same and what has been the biggest change to it all?

GIANCARLO ESPOSITO: Oh, it’s changed so many times. When you deal with different collaborators, you strive to make it better and better, obviously, but the story gets amplified and gets a resonance when it gets closer and closer to the truth, so no version of this story stayed the same. Originally, I wanted to stick as close to the original Driver story as I could, and then we changed the place to New Orleans and created Gracián Parish. I like the original with all the names, but it was a British series in Manchester by a Manchester writer, in Danny Brocklehurst. I thought it had to be more fluent in its expression of the city that we were in. So, the most significant changes were that he became a black car driver and not a yellow taxi driver from the original, which I thought had a grittiness in being a yellow cab driver, but that’s rare today. It seemed the right decision to make, to make him a black car driver because now we have Uber and any kind of car, but if you’re a dedicated driver, you have a dedicated car and normally it’s a black car.

That changed our feeling and the characterizations behind who he was picking up. I remember at one point we had a scene in a taxi where Gracián Parish, but then his name was Vince, was picking up an old guy and we had radios. That’s another significant change. There was the radio that would call him and say, “Go pick this person up,” but that doesn’t exist anymore. I was reading the script and, all of a sudden, I’m thinking, “This is not our world anymore. We don’t have that communication.” So, we changed it to a cell phone that he would be alerted with, for who to pick up. So, he had to pick up this old guy after a church ceremony, and the guy asks him to stop to empty his colostomy bag. He was a regular customer, and it was all about impressing upon the audience that the driver was driving regular run-of-the-mill people. He had regular customers and he had new customers, and he was constantly being preyed upon by his customer base. That was another significant change. It changed quite a bit before it got to what it is now.

I thought it was a really interesting way to handle the memory flashbacks to have your character walking through the house in episode five, before he has to leave with his family, opening the different doors and seeing things in the different rooms. How did that come about and why do you think that works as effectively as it does?

ESPOSITO: It was an idea that came up. We were all collaborating and trying to figure out how to create this ghost, and it came to me that Gracián Parish is haunted by the ghosts of his past. So, it started with the idea of a toy car. And then, that door is always closed because behind that door holds unpleasant memories and a ghost lives there. And so, I thought, why don’t we open the door? But what does he see when he opens the door? He sees a well-made bed, kids’ posters, teenage boy’s posters, boxing gloves that he used to box with his son. And then, he sees this toy car and he’s a driver, so he’s into cars and he probably tried to impress that upon his son. It was an idea that just came to me, in terms of the ghost idea, and then we extended it when I started to think about what he sees when he opens the door to the room. And then, my collaborative writers said that we should extend that because that ghost exists everywhere for him.

That created this one section of our piece where he is constantly checking on his kids. Because one is gone, it doesn’t change the idea of checking on them. When I came home late when my kids were young, I’d go to each door and see if they were sleeping okay. That’s how that came about. It was different in the way we did it because I had to give the emotion and look in the room. If it’s on my face, I’m showing you what I’m seeing or not seeing. That became powerful to me. We could get into a memory from there, like what happened in this room. With Gracián and his son, something horrible eventually happened that he couldn’t forgive himself for. In that moment when they face off and he’s gotta hit him, that was hard for me. I came up in the age of corporal punishment, and I remember my father hitting me and my mother hitting me. That should never happen, but it did. So, it was a memory. It’s something that I wanted to address because it’s part of my childhood and part of a traumatic memory.

It plays so much into giving the audience an understanding of the grief that he’s not dealing with and how that also connects to his own past. It’s quite a powerful moment.

ESPOSITO: I’m glad because part of this story is to deal with loss and what we’ve left behind, but it’s also to uncover what we’re hiding now and what we’re afraid to look at, or don’t have enough courage to stand up to. When we finally see Gracián in full bloom, we realize he’s kept something from his family. You’re as dark as your secrets, and he has a secret that he’s been keeping because he’s ashamed. That shame will eat him up, along with the loss of his son and not being able to provide for his family. All those things became the hurdle of his life and will be the impetus for him to move through those hurdles to find out who he really is. Gracián is still struggling with having left the life behind, which is a life we don’t know about, and I think that’s tantalizing for the audience. We wanna see what moves he’ll make to really become an extraordinary man. I feel like it’s the story of an everyman, and every man who becomes an extraordinary man because he has to go back into the past, step through that ghost door once again, and uncover all the reasoning and why he did what he did, and why he’s keeping it a secret now. Gracián Parish is not ready to be whole yet because he’s not ready to tell the truth about who he is and who he’s been.

How Did That Heartbreaking ‘Parish’ Moment Between Gracián Parish and The Horse’s Son Evolve?

There’s such an interesting moment toward the end of this, where The Horse’s son asks Gracián if he can go with him. Your character could have taken him out of this family situation, but he doesn’t seem to be in a mental place to do that, even if he wanted to. Instead, he tells him that he doesn’t have to grow up to be what his father is. How do you feel about that moment and that decision? Were there conversations about playing it any other way?

ESPOSITO: There were conversations. That idea came up through my brilliant showrunners Ryan Maldonado and Eduardo Canto. I remember Ryan describing that moment and I thought, “Wow, you’re brilliant,” because it brought up a lot of feelings for me, once again. It hit me in my gut and I felt it. Who is that child that you have to leave behind, or that you wanna save, but you can’t? It’s a heartbreaking moment, but no, Gracián Parish is not ready to be able to handle that responsibility. When he told me this idea, I wanted to say yes because that’s the son that I’ve lost. We talked about it and we played it out in many different incarnations. That’s what we do in a writers’ room because we’re figuring it out with the showrunners who are gonna write it. What’s the strongest choice to make? God, it would be a really great solve to take on this son and to try again to have a second chance. But in reality, Parish is not ready to have that second chance. He’s not in a place where he’s requited himself with himself. So, he lets that go because he can’t. There’s no possible way. He’s not ready to be that father again because he’s still suffering the depth of the loss that he’s suffering.

It certainly feels like, by the end of the season, there are a lot of deeper roots and there’s more history there that we would get to know more about with another season. One of my favorite characters in the show is Sister Anne, and it feels like you’ve only just scratched the surface of the potential of that character. How do you view that dynamic? What was that like to play? And is that something you would like to see more of in another season?

ESPOSITO: Amanda Brugel is absolutely wonderful and marvelous in the portrayal of Sister Anne. It really goes against type, of what you think a sister might be. There were a lot of ideas that I had when we created that character because I came up in the Catholic church. It was important for me to have someone who, as Sister Anne is drawn, was in the life with Parish, and then she got out and went into the ministry. It’s a very contemporary, modern-day way of administering, even though her name is Sister Anne. I love that character. I’d love to be able to have her back because she is the voice of integrity and morality surrounding Gray, but she also is a friend, so it takes on a different effect when someone who’s your friend and has known you in many different incarnations, including your nefarious previous getaway driver life, can suggest gently that you are returning to something that’s gonna really be detrimental for you. So, that friendship element and the way she plays it is so very beautiful. He goes to the church for solace, but he never finds that peace in solace there, even though he still tries and keeps returning to it. She knows him personally. She knows the pain he’s going through when he’s holding that baby and talking about his son. She tries to talk sense of him into him, allowing him to know that you can’t bring him back. He’s not coming back. It’s himself that he has to work on now. So, I think there’s great potential behind that character in Parish’s life.

Giancarlo Esposito Would Love To Do a Second Season of ‘Parish’

This season ends with someone saying, “Parish, I have a feeling we’ll be hearing from him again.” So, will we be hearing from him again? Are you hoping to do more episodes? Have you had conversations about what a possible Season 2 would be?

ESPOSITO: I love my writers so much and it’s such a beautiful thing to do the investigation, no matter what happens. As an actor and someone who’s put the amount of energy, truth and organic sense of life into this piece, of course, I would love a second season. We talk about that because when you speak about it and work on it, it comes. It’s like inviting it. I know the piece is different than anything we’ve seen before, and you certainly haven’t seen me in this light before. I’m hoping that people will watch and see it, and that AMC will give us the vote of confidence to go for a second season. So, yes, we talk about different scenarios and discuss it, so that we stay excited and stay warm surrounding it. Then, when the call comes, we’ll be ready to share our ideas with a great partner. AMC has been a terrific partner. Every part of this organization believes in character-driven drama. Have they ever had a drama like this, that has all this edge and is a crime story that has violence in it? I don’t know if they’ve had anything like it. But they certainly have an appetite for this particular show and they’ve been so behind it that we wanna be ready to collaborate with them and get their ideas as well, when that time comes.

I love that you have this career where you can play the lead in something like Parish, you can stir up some trouble on things like The Boys and Abigail, you can play in the Star Wars universe, and then you can go work with Francis Ford Coppola in Megalopolis. What does this stage of your acting career feel like?

ESPOSITO: It feels delicious because I feel more relaxed about how I’m able to create and it allows me to be more mindful and thoughtful. I am constantly striving to work with the best to challenge me, and that allows me to challenge myself on a deeper level, yet listen to what a more youthful, younger audience is seeking to find in these dramas and television shows. It’s not all gratuitous violence or just fantasy. I have the sense that Parish is rooted in a very particular reality, and that reality, I’m hoping, will allow people to see that no matter what their situation is, there can always be hope and there can always be a way out. Part of what propels Parish to the place he’s in is to find out what happened to his son. That becomes important to get an answer to. When we have loose ends and we don’t have answers for what happened to someone very special to us in our life, sometimes we just forget them. We don’t want to remember that painful memory because we weren’t able to put all those pieces together and figure out what really happened. Where did I go wrong? You wonder how to answer that. Sometimes maybe the answer is, through my example, I didn’t leave, and maybe that’s where I went wrong.

My mother used to say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” That didn’t make a lot of sense to me because I’m observing you and I’m seeing who you really are. I know a lot about people by the way they talk to people they love or to their friends. How they speak to them or how they treat other people, you learn so much from. That’s something I’m learning to be in. So, this part of my career feels great because I’m able to feel as if I’m doing what I really want. This particular project is so dear to me because it was eight years in the making and I put a lot of my life into it. That’s a little bit scary because it’s revealing and vulnerable. When I’m given a character, I can take all these good and bad traits on, own them, and go, “I didn’t write it. That’s not me. I’m just acting.”

But when I’m creating a character and it becomes more personal, it becomes more alive. Not that every role should be that way, but it becomes alive and it’s transformative of the traumatic events that are similar to Gracián Parish’s in my life that I can heal. It’s about understanding and healing some of those events through the work I do because I’m able to do that with my work and have sort of an exorcism. I don’t have to be the angry Black man or the one that always complains about, “They didn’t give me a chance,” because I’m giving myself a chance at a new life with my producing of this and being so hands-on and with my sharing a very personal story that I’m hoping that people will love and enjoy.

Parish is available to stream at AMC+. Check out the trailer:

Watch on AMC+